by Eric Beetner
45
BRENT
I didn’t want them in my car. He stank of flop sweat and she wouldn’t stop making noises from the back seat. Clyde was right, we’re not killers. I’m sure some people would have dumped them in a shallow grave out of revenge for what they tried to pull or to get rid of witnesses, but all we do is rent cars. I do, anyway. I don’t dump bodies. So there I was, driving away to dump these two bodies back at a house in the suburbs, back with their two spoiled kids and their grandparents. I wondered if they’d gotten the larceny out of their systems.
The wife, Linda, sure talked a good game out there in the parking lot. Until she got shot, that is. Now she was grunting and whining like a dog who got run over by a car. I picked up a dog once after I saw it get clobbered by a minivan. I drove it to a vet and gave it over. They wanted me to pay for fixing it. I told them it wasn’t my dog, I couldn’t get involved. This wasn’t my mess either and I was damn glad to be getting it over with. If that meant driving these two assholes who tried to hijack us back to their real lives so I could get back to mine, so be it.
“Hey listen,” Sean started to say. “I wanted to apologize—”
“It’s better if you don’t say a goddamn word, Griffin.” I started straight ahead, hands tense on the wheel and my voice quiet. “Only thing coming out of your mouth should be directions. And if you could get her to shut the fuck up too, that’d be nice.”
He turned over the seat and spoke to her in a low tone. “Linda, please, keep it down. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes and then we can get you taken care of.”
She responded with a louder, more pained whine. She sounded like a cat in heat. She deserved it. I wasn’t going to be the one to shoot her, or Sean, but I didn’t feel the least bit bad she’d taken a bullet.
I might not have had a gun, but I couldn’t resist poking the wound a little bit. “I bet a smelly car doesn’t seem so bad right about now, does it?”
I checked for a reaction in the rear-view, but she kept right on writhing with her eyes closed. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I smiled.
46
SKEETER
The last snort stung like a bitch when it went up my nose. I was trying like hell to suck down even the most microscopic crystal. Damn near sucked my lungs inside out. The last bump is the worst. As much as that first bump is like the first smoke of the morning, only, like, times a million, the last bump with nothing else on the horizon is like getting punched in the face by a ball of barbed wire.
Important thing was I was speeding again. Maybe too fast. Back behind the wheel of my own car which I’d liberated from the hotel parking lot now that the cops had all gone home, I was thinking hard on how to rectify this situation. Lard-ass still had the dope. Car rental guys were still running around looking for him and I didn’t get my chance to ride in as the hero and deliver the load and the heads of the jerks who tried to steal from us to Corgan. Guess I got a little ahead of myself on that count.
My brain buzzed with the throttle wide open. My connection to Brent was about all I had, only I didn’t know where to find him when he wasn’t at the shop. I could call Corgan and get info on where Clyde was at, but that would be explaining what went to shit at the meeting. And I could ask Corgan for some extra hands on this deal, but we’d have the same issue.
Guess I wasn’t going as fast as I thought because some jackass in a red four door went blasting past me leaning on his horn and giving me the finger. I checked my Speedo and I was only doing about thirty in a forty-five zone, but still, you don’t give me the finger unless you want it snapped off and shoved up your ass.
I gave my little four cylinder the beans and she whined like hell but started catching up. Pretty soon I was doing sixty in the forty-five zone. I’d see how he liked that.
I came up on his rear bumper and pawed through my glove box until I found a Slayer CD. I pushed it in and cranked it up real loud. I wanted to sound real evil. With my windows rolled down I gunned it again and veered into the lane next to him. I could see him checking me out, a big old frat boy type from UVA or something. He gave me attitude again, but I noticed he didn’t shoot me the finger or nothing this time. He realized he was dealing with a no bullshit kind of guy.
“Where’s that finger now, punk?” I yelled across the lane between us. I doubt he could hear me over the Slayer. He slowed down to let me drift by him, all of sudden less concerned with pinning it right to the speed limit. I slowed down with him.
“Hey, you dropped something back there,” I said. Then I flipped him the bird high and straight. He shot another one right back at me. Fucker. I swerved and knocked doors with him, two doors to four. Now he looked different. He grabbed the wheel with both hands, his finger back where it belonged. Well, shit, really it belonged up his ass, but I was driving so . . .
He started cursing me out. I couldn’t hear a word of it but you can see it on someone’s face when they’re pissed and goin’ off like that. I tapped him again and he jammed on his brakes to get away from me. I laughed my ass off and let him go. Out of habit I reached for another bump, like a cig after a good fuck. Forgot for a second I was out. It cooled my mood for a little bit, but at least I figured out where to go. If I had to find this Brent guy, the only place I knew to look for him was at the car rental place. I doubted he’d be there just hangin’ around, but I did bet there would be some record of him. Employee file, paycheck stub, some shit. Something with his address on it.
Hell, anything was better than calling Corgan.
47
SEAN
The kid dumped us at the front sidewalk outside of Betty and Ernie’s house. Linda leaned heavily on me as I limped toward the door. She was bleeding quite a bit, all over my shirt. For a wild minute I wanted to toss her to the ground and just take off, run anywhere. I didn’t do it, of course. But I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
I lugged her up the three steps to the porch and prayed that the front door was unlocked. Naturally it wasn’t. I rang the bell and waited. When no one answered, I rang again and heard Ernie shouting from somewhere in the back of the house, “Betty, get the damn door.”
After a minute, her sour face peeked out at us, turning from acrid to shocked in a fraction of a second. In another circumstance, I might have found her reaction comical. “Get out of the way, Betty, Linda’s been shot.”
“Oh Jesus, Jesus Christ in Heaven,” she said, backing away. “Don’t get anything on the carpet.”
I dragged Linda into the bathroom and sat her on the toilet. I pulled washcloths from the cupboard and tossed them in the sink. “Get those wet with cold water,” I barked at Betty.
“Those are my good washcloths, for company.”
“Good. We’re company.”
Ernie called from the family room, “Who is it?”
Betty’s hand fluttered about her throat. “It’s . . . uh . . . Linda’s been shot.”
Linda moaned a little and blinked. I wanted to choke her. The sound of Ernie’s heavy frame pounded down the hallway. “What the hell is this?” he asked.
He shoved me and Betty out of the way and knelt beside his daughter, pulling up her shirt to examine the wound. Betty wasn’t good for anything at the moment, so I wet the washcloths and wrung them out in the sink. I waved them at Betty. She hesitated and then stepped forward and tapped Ernie on the shoulder and handed them to him. He took them and placed them over the hole in Linda’s side. The bullet had grazed her. Cutting a deep gash in her side, but as Ernie cleaned it up, it was obvious it wasn’t deep.
“For Christ sakes, Linda,” he grumbled. “It’s a goddamn flesh wound. Sit up and stop the theatrics.”
Her brow furrowed, but she stopped writhing and moaning.
He stood and shook his head, looking at me with the same disgust he always showed. “Mind telling me what this is all about?” he asked.
“I want to take a shower,” Linda said. “I feel awful.”
“What
happened?” Betty demanded. “What are you involved in?”
Linda looked at me. “It was a hunter,” she said. “We were in the woods and a hunter shot me.”
No one said anything for a minute. The logical question would have been to ask why we hadn’t called the cops, or 911. But Betty had never been one for dealing with hard questions and harder answers, so she just pursed her lips, nodded once, and then moved to help Linda undress.
I followed Ernie to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. Chad and Becky sat at the table, hunched over their bowls of cereal. “What happened to Mom?” Becky asked.
Ernie glared at me as he answered her. “She cut her side.”
He jerked his head at me and I followed him through the kitchen and onto the deck where we wouldn’t be overheard.
“It’s not hunting season,” he said.
“No.”
“What the hell is going on, Sean? What the hell is going on?”
Becky opened the door. “Gramps, is it okay if I bake cookies? Any time Mom gets stressed, she likes to eat a lot of cookies. I mean a LOT.”
“Sure, kid. Go ahead.” He turned back to me. “Well?”
48
CLYDE
I pulled into the nearest gas station so I could call Corgan. I smelled like I hadn’t showered in days. I parked next to a gas pump and climbed out. The bloody hand print from Mrs. Griffin was somewhat hard to see in the shade. I opened the back door and went to work on it with a squeegee. A guy in a Mercedes took the pump in front of mine. When he climbed out he gave me a thumb’s up. “Just getting off your shift, Doc?”
I tried to give him a smile and something resembling a nod.
“Cool. What line are you in?” His eyes rolled over the bruising on my face and for a second he looked like he wanted to change his mind about asking.
What line was I in? What the hell did that mean? Green scrubs. I looked like a doctor. “ER,” I said, thinking fast. “Just helped deliver a baby.”
“Nice. I’m an anesthesiologist.” He smiled like I should be impressed.
“Cool,” I said. I climbed back in the Tahoe and parked in the spot closest to the front door. I knew I should probably eat something, but I couldn’t think of anything but getting my baby girl back and somehow trying to make things right with Madeline again. I didn’t know if my marriage was over or not. Christ I hoped not. I didn’t know what the fallout would be from the deal with Corgan, but after this I was done. I was done forever. God just let me get through this.
I wasn’t going to eat anything. I didn’t know if I’d ever eat again.
I punched in Corgan’s number and waited.
“Mr. McDowd. How nice to hear from you.”
“I’ve got the Tahoe.”
“Great. I knew you could do it if I motivated you. I’m all about motivation.”
No shit. “How’s my daughter?”
“She’s fine, kid, just fine. Lot of hair on this girl. And a nice set of lungs, too.”
I pressed my lips together and waited for the wave of nausea I was feeling to pass.
“Meet me at the Waffle House by the beach.”
“Waffle House.”
“It’s brunch time, my friend. Come on in and let me buy you some pancakes while you hold your baby girl.”
I pointed the Tahoe through the still quiet streets of downtown Virginia Beach. In a couple of hours the beach would be crowded and everyone would be half drunk by noon. I passed the diners and clubs that had probably changed hands a half dozen times in the last fifteen years. The one establishment that hadn’t changed since my college days was the Waffle House. It probably had the same matted carpet, the same menu, and probably the same waitresses—older, a little softer and a little harder at the same time.
Despite the blast of the AC, I was sweating. I pulled into a parking space and tried to catch my breath. I was about to meet my daughter. It wasn’t lost on me that our first meeting would be me delivering drugs to Corgan to get her back to her mother. I was done with this. After this drop, finished. No more. It ended now. I was done being a goddamn mule. I wanted out.
I didn’t know if I had a business to go back to. I didn’t know if I had a marriage anymore. The sun had been up for a few hours now, and the chances of the FBI noticing that a badge was missing were pretty good. One way or another there would likely be jail time, maybe prison.
None of that changed the fact that right now I was a father. First things first . . . get my baby girl back.
I took a deep breath and swallowed. I didn’t remember my last meal, my last drink of water. I rested my head against the seat and willed myself to move. My eyes slid to the ceiling panel and I felt a little reassured, knowing this was the end of the road. I felt my mouth curve up in a smile, the first I’d had in a couple of days. I reached over to give the ceiling fabric a pat to reassure myself the familiar solidity of the bricks was still there.
It billowed under my hand like an empty sack. My heart seized. I reached across and pulled at the corner. It came away free in my hand, the fabric hanging like torn tarp. That fucker Griffin had taken it all.
What would Corgan do now? What would he do to my daughter?
I needed more time. Had any of Corgan’s men seen me? Probably so. I was sure he had men watching the parking lot, waiting to grab me. I tucked the fabric back in place and sat for a minute. Corgan and another man appears outside of the Waffle House and ambled over to the Tahoe. I sat still and tried not to look as panicked as I felt. They climbed into the backseat. A third climbed into the Pontiac in the next space.
“Drive,” Corgan said.
I had no idea if they knew the roof panel was empty. I just drove. My baby made small smacking and cooing sounds. In the rear-view, I could see a tuft of dark hair peeking out from a blanket.
“Your baby needs her diaper changed,” Corgan said. “She is a big eater, I’ll tell you that much.” He used a fat finger to stroke her hair.
“Where are we going?” I managed.
He directed me to a warehouse district.
Naturally.
It’s always a warehouse district. This was where they’d put a bullet between my eyes, smash my baby’s head with a brick and leave us to be discovered by the homeless. Or maybe they’d just leave me and sell her on the black market.
“This monkey could have taken a shower,” Corgan’s spare covered his nose as he spoke.
“Indeed,” Corgan said. “Pull over here.”
I parked the car and turned to face Corgan. “Look.”
“Get out,” he said.
I climbed out and stood on shaking legs. Corgan climbed out too. “Here she is, as promised.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. But he was placing her into my arms.
“I’m a reasonable man. I mean your child no harm unless you cross me. See how reasonable I am?”
The man in the Pontiac climbed out and stood beside his car, arms folded in front of him.
I looked down at my daughter. She had dark eyes, like her mother and a head full of dark hair. Her tiny pink hands were balled into fists at her cheeks. She was the tiniest thing I’d ever seen and the most beautiful.
“It’s empty,” Corgan’s thug reported.
I tore my gaze from my daughter and met Corgan’s eyes—eyes that had gone cold and hard.
49
SEAN
The house smelled like chocolate chip cookies. I shouldn’t have been hungry after everything that had been going on, but my stomach rumbled audibly. Ernie glared at me.
After Linda got out of the shower, her side bandaged and her mood a little better, we showed her parents where the coke was hidden, in a plastic bin under the bed in our room. Now we were on the back deck again, where we could speak freely.
“We were trying to sell it back,” I said.
“Well of all the . . .” Betty said. “Linda, we raised you better than that. I cannot believe what this man has talked you into.”
&nbs
p; “Looks like a lot of coke,” Ernie said. He was leaning back in his chair and rubbing his chin, thinking.
“It was in the ceiling of the car.”
“We found it by accident,” Linda supplied. “We weren’t involved in anything illegal.”
She looked at me as if daring me to tell them about how I’d financed our vacation. Yeah, I was going to have to re-think this whole marriage thing when we were done. Mostly when I looked at her now I wanted to punch something.
Ernie stood and opened the liquor cabinet and poured two drinks. He returned to his chair, handing me a glass as he did so. “I want to hear every single detail of this.”
I had just told him everything, out on the deck, but the son of a bitch wanted to hear it all again. So what if I’d held a few things back before. He studied me with those razor sharp eyes and I knew he knew that there was more to what I’d told him before. About Detroit. About my brother’s business and getting screwed out of what was mine.
“Start at the beginning and leave nothing out.” He leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees. Then he gestured to his wife. “And you,” he said, “keep your mouth shut while he’s talking. I need to hear what he has to say. And this time I want the whole story.”
So I cleared my throat and started at the beginning . . . the very beginning, back in Michigan when I took what was mine from my brother and his partner.
50
SKEETER
I ran my car over something. No idea what it was. Could have been a person, I guess. Probably a cat or a raccoon or a possum. Some fuckin’ thing that didn’t know no better. That’s some Darwin shit right there.
I didn’t see it. Felt the bump. My eyes had gone blurry, my brain a little hazy—not at the edges like when you’re tired—but right down the middle like I had my own personal Charlie Brown dark cloud in the center of my brain shooting lightning and raining until my thoughts were water-logged and slow. It happens on the comedown. The God. Damned. Come. Down.